Driving Moodle the Lancastrian Way

Ruslan Kabalin

Philip Tubman

Institutional VLE (challenges)

• Lots of courses!• Not taught how it is recorded

– 1 course for 2 ‘modules’ (co-teaching)– 1 course taught multiple times in a year (‘cohorts’)

• Use of Moodle for– Departmental pages– Career pages– Study advice pages– Library skills pages– Fire Safety pages– etc.

• Changing enrolments• e-submission/ e-marking

Additional challenges

• All courses available during entire time at Lancaster

• PhD appraisal system

• Postgraduate admissions portal

Principles

• Moodle does not make up the rules; the student information data (LUSI) is king (queen?)

• Moodle will never display official grades to students (related to above – the student portal/ interactive transcript does this)

• Departments can control their ‘VLE destiny’ (how many, when do students get access, whether to copy content forward…)

• E-submissions will be recorded and time-stamped in student information system

• Naming convention is enforced

What is LUSI?

• Homegrown student info system

– Data owned by registry

– System owned by ISS

• Managed in departments

• Operated using LUSI Desktop (Windows VB client)

Data in LUSI

• Modules

• Staff

• Enrolments

• Assessments

• Time tabling

• Current year, past and future

• PGR appraisals

Let’s look at some pictures

Moodle

• Introduced as Pilot in 2011 to replace buggy existing VLE

• Live since 2012

• HA infrastructure

• Packaged with more than 20 plugins

• Mahara integration

• Contributions to core

Some stats

• Up to 350 simultaneous users at peak time

• 3700+ unique logins per day

• 4938 courses (4528 automatically created)

• 36K active users

LUSI Integration

• Intermediate database and sync scripts

• Enrolment plugin that syncs Moodle

• Assignments submission information synced back to registry

How we sync

• Only API communication with LUSI

• XML::SAX for parsing large data on the fly

• Intermediate DB on PostgreSQL

DBAPI

LUSI Webservice

Sync Script

Moodle

/enrol/lusi

/local/luassignsync

Intermediate Database

Moodle comes to play

• Enrolment plugin– Uses intermediate database

– Uses idnumber filed as identifier

– Syncing various things• Categories

• Courses

• Cohorts

• Enrolments

• Groups and groupings

• Assessments (assignments)

Moodle comes to play

Categories syncing

• Builds and maintains category tree for 5 years

– Changes visibility

– Updates category names

– Moves category items

– Deletes category items

5-year sync window

13/1412/13 14/15 15/1610/11 11/12 16/17

Categories syncing

Course syncing

• Creates courses based on LUSI data

– Rolls over content from previous year if instructed

• Moves courses between categories

• Updates courses data (full name, short name)

Course syncing

• Shared courses

– Contains several modules

• Non-shared courses

– Contains one module

– Same module could also be a member of a shared course

• Students are enrolled to modules in LUSI, but transferred to course enrolments in Moodle

Course syncing

Cohort syncing

• Creates cohorts based on modules data

• Updates cohorts data

• Remove cohorts

• Maintain student enrolments to cohorts (based on module enrolments data)

Cohort syncing

Enrolments

• Course enrolments based on module enrolments data.

– Enrol users and assign roles

– Update roles

– Set enrolment validity dates

– Expire users who no longer enrolled

Enrolments

Syncing groups and groupings

• Create and maintain groups

– based on event data (e.g. lecture, seminar)

– based on modules data aka cohort groups

• Create an maintain groupings

– Event groupings

– Cohort groupings

– Alternate groupings

• Group and groupings membership updates

Syncing groups and groupings

Assignment sync

• Create and maintain assignments based on assignments data

– Normal Moodle assignments

– Turnitin assignments

• Limit assignment access to particular grouping.

• Sync submission event with LUSI

Assignment sync

Something else to sync?

PG applicant web boards

• Courses for PG offer holders

• User data comes from CRM system

• Uses applicant’s account that will be linked to real username at the start of academic year

• Courses represent faculties

• Created in LUSI similar to shared courses

PG applicant web boards

PG appraisals

• PGR record of studies

• Appraisal activities (e.g. supervisor meeting, confirmation panel, appraisals)

• Moodle courses represent faculties

• Course sections access restricted via grouping

• Grouping is determined by LUSI data

– Students

– Appraisers

– Panel members

PG appraisals

Thanks!

Contact us:

Ruslan Kabalin, r.kabalin@lancaster.ac.uk, @rkabalin

Philip Tubman, p.tubman@lancaster.ac.uk, @philtubman